Ussaria is a conlang which I've been building for a few months or so, and in all likelihood it's the conlang of mine which has been running for the longest. I think this success is mostly because Ussaria was made not through top down edicts about grammar but rather by translating short sentences, which has been very successful and would recommend to any scrapper unsatisfied with their inability to commit.

Ussaria is set in a conworld of mine, in a large empire which dominates a small continent centered on the north pole, early on in the Industrial Revolution. Part of why I'm posting Ussaria now is because Ussaria's conworld is actually modeled on an edgy conworld I invented as a one-off in Middle School, in which an evil Santa enslaved elves. This has evolved into the Empire Ussaret, which lacks Santa or Elves but has certain features in common. I'll probably put some stuff on Ussaret and it's world either here or on the conworld subforum.

In any case, here's the language. A side effect of the approach I took in making Ussaria is that the phonology is rather underdeveloped; I have a good idea of the phoneme inventory but not exactly of allophony, etc (The orthography is nearly identical to English in consonants and generic Spanish for vowels). Anyway, since the phonology's less fleshed out, I'm heading straight into morphosyntax, and more specifically into nouns.

Ussaria nouns are marked for case and number. First I'll discuss case and then I'll put number on another post, so this doesn't get too unwieldy.

The Nominative is the unmarked case. It’s used for most subjects of transitive and intransitive sentences.

The plural is used to indicate that there is more than one of something. It’s marked with the prefixes un- and u-. The alternation between these two allomorphs is conditioned semantically; un- is used with humans as well as a few other highly animate nouns (such as lightning, anthropomorphic/highly intellligent/culturally salient animals, gods) while u- is used for everything else.

un-senjex
PL-polar.bear
“polar bears”

u-sanny
PL-table
“tables”

Both allomorphs induce in some nouns the loss of /a/, fairly randomly. This comes from a historical change, when schwa became /a/ when stressed and was deleted elsewhere. Because of this, the /a/ can be lost from anywhere, so long as only one /a/ is lost.

kadar→ un-kdar
child→ PL-child

ipta→ u-ipt
cup→ PL-cup

Historically Ussaria had a paucal, marking that there were relatively less of something. However, it increasingly fell out of the language, and is now only marked on a tiny number of nouns. Like the plural, there’s an alternation conditioned on human/non-human, in this case between eys- and e-. Also as with the plural, the paucal causes the loss of historical schwas in the first syllable.

Eys-kdarPAUC-child
“a few children”

E-muu
PAUC-cow
“a few cattle”

There are many more fossilized forms which have spun off as regular lexical items, such as eyswek "harem" or elepku "battalion". These too can take regular pluralization, e.g. uneyswek, uelepku.

U-lty imesi?
PL-question there.is
"Questions?"

Last edited by Solarius on 03 Jan 2017 18:32, edited 2 times in total.

Digraphs like <zh> are separated from /z+h/ sequences by the use of the hyphen for the latter, which I don't like but I can't think of anything better.

I'm not sure if I'll make /f/ a phoneme or not. If it is, I'll have it pattern with /j w/.

The syllable structure is a little odd. Basically it's (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C) but there are a few oddities.
-/r l ɭ j w/ can all be syllabic consonants, although /j w/ can only be syllabic word initially or word finally.
-/j w/ when they occur word finally surface as palatalization and labialization, respectively, on the last consonant of the word. Thus waky "to put together, to fold" is bisyllabic phonemically but monosyllabic phonetically.
-There's something of a sonority hierarchy. It follows the ordering that the manners of articulation are listed above in, with the additional possibility of combining two in the same class. Thus /pt/, /nm/, and /wj/ are legal. /ŋ/ patterns like a stop sometimes and a nasal other times, a difference which can be seen in some morphophonological alternations. This is because it comes historically from a merger of */ŋ/ and */g/.
-Gemination is allowed.
-Diphthongs aren't. Hiatus is though, and is abundant.

We had a little dicussion on the ZBB about this and we pretty much came to the conclusion that retroflexes appear when there is (at least historically) either a palatal or postalveolar series already present, though what's happening in Scandinavia may just prove us wrong, and Teiwa has an interesting inventory.

Still a nice inventory, though, and the retroflexes do certainly make it look less European.

We had a little dicussion on the ZBB about this and we pretty much came to the conclusion that retroflexes appear when there is (at least historically) either a palatal or postalveolar series already present, though what's happening in Scandinavia may just prove us wrong, and Teiwa has an interesting inventory.

Still a nice inventory, though, and the retroflexes do certainly make it look less European.

What's the vowels like?

Hehe, I warned y'all the phonology was incomplete . The vowel are bland /i e a o u/, though more often than not (i.e. before or after coronals and /j/) /u/ fronts to [y].

I didn't know the bit about the palatal series. That being said, the development of the retroflexes in Ussaria is because of outside influence; retroflexes are an areal feature in the language's urheimat and it developed them from postalveolars and loanwords and the like.

Both imesi and eleri are somewhat defective; they can't take marking for the passive/perfect or reflexive, and imesi can't take the negative. However, both can take the usual marking for the reciprocal to indicate that the subject is by itself, alone in some fashion.

Kadar ng-imesi.
child REC-exist
"There exists a child by themself."

This is somewhat outdated but still in use. The use of the reciprocal with eleri is more complex, and there are two different uses. The first simply says that there are no children alone, while the second, using the negative of eleri implyies that no children at all are alone.

Predicate nominals and adjectives take a bewildering variety of copulas. The two main ones are ko and ini. Ini is a full-on verb and can take the inflection of any other verb. Ko is a non-verbal element and takes no inflection, though if one wishes to negate it that can be done with the particle i, which follows it. Generally, ini is used for states which are temporary, while the demonstrative ko is used for states that are permanent--the distinction is generally analogous to the Spanish estar/ser split.

Yik oguh ini.
book scandalous be
"The book is scandalous."

Klol gisret ko.
man short be
"The man is short."

Much of these distinctions, however are idiomatic. Ko is used for age, for instance.

Sometimes the use of ko instead of ini can imply direct experience/knowledge, which often co-occurs with greater certainty. In the first sentence, it is implied that the addressee is always satisfied, due to the speaker's direct experience or firmly grounded inference, while no such implication exists in the second.

Regarding the /z+h/-type sequences, the issue could be resolved by using diaritics, such as <ć ś ź> for /tʂ ʂ ʐ/. A less dramatic change might be to seperate such sequences with an apostrophe rather than a hyphen, according to your preferences in aesthetics.

Khunjund wrote:Regarding the /z+h/-type sequences, the issue could be resolved by using diaritics, such as <ć ś ź> for /tʂ ʂ ʐ/. A less dramatic change might be to seperate such sequences with an apostrophe rather than a hyphen, according to your preferences in aesthetics.

Frankly I don't really want to use diacritics; I like the digraphs and I have a bunch of translations and dictionary entries using them. It was already a big enough chore to revise them a few weeks back when I reworked the verbs.

The apostrophe is already used to represent the glottal stop. So if I used the apostrophe the word /kes.ʔho/ would be indistinguishable from /ke.sho/.

One of my goals in creating Ussaria was to have a relatively simple verbal system, instead relying moreso on pronouns, adverbs, quirky subject, and postpositions to fill in what is not present. But Ussaria's verbal system wanted to grow, and so now it's in a good medium where most verbs have very little to no inflection but are capable of taking quite a bit of it.

The first inflection which I wish to discuss are voice adjusting operations: the passive, the reflexive, and the reciprocal.

The passive is marked with the suffixes -li and -lli, the former in the first conjugation, the latter in the second. The passive also puts the subject in the nominative case.

U-chmot tete-li.
PL-word say-PASS
"Words were said."

Muu sardu-lli.
cow cook-PASS
"The cow was cooked."

Because both indirect and direct objects are treated the same, one can make either one the focused item in passive constructions. The other one is included in the accusative.

Yawe yik-ak ogzhamush-ak war. → Ogzhamush yik-ak wa-lli.
Yawe book-ACC actor-ACC give → actor book-ACC give-PASS
"Yawe gave the book to the actor." → "The actor was given the book."

As discussed in the case section, the original subject can be reintroduced in the instrumental case.

Ogzhamush yik-ak Yawe-su wa-lli.
actor book-ACC Yawe-INSTR give-PASS

You may have noticed that the passive of war isn't *war-li, but is wa-lli. This is because of a morphophonological alternation. When a verb ends in a consonant or a consonant cluster, the consonants are lost. In the first conjugation, the passive suffix becomes -lli. As a result, the two conjugations are indistinguishable in the passive when the root ends in a consonant.

short→sho-lli
make→make-PASS

byamisy→byami-lli
kill→kill-PASS

The reciprocal is marked with the prefixes ngi- and ngli-, in the first and second conjugations, respectively.

Because the passive voice marker is used for reflexives, it's not available for use in constructions like the English "They were seen by each other." Instead, the participants are marked with the accusative case, unless another case is present.

Ugobyal-ak ngli-byamisy.
3p.PL.PROX-ACC REC-kill
"They were killed by each other."

Yawe-k Tort-ia ngi-tete.
Yawe-ACC Tortu-COM REC-talk
"Yawe and Tortu were talked to by each other."

Negation in Ussaria is marked with the suffix -i in both conjugations, which occurs immediately after the root. It negates the entire truth of the proposition. Speakers can also negate other elements with the particle i, and this is often can co-occur with the verbal suffix -i in the form of double negation

A few notes:
1. Byamisy has an irregular imperative; Imperatives in Ussaria are usually just marked with the bare stem.
2. Relative clauses are made by gapping and precede the noun.
3. Klolwek is a coordinating compound. If it were endocentric, the form in the second sentence would be *klolosh.

So now onto the next part of the verbal complex: the optative. There are actually two optatives, which occur in the same slot in the verbal complex. The first, which is marked with -le in both conjugations is the present optative. It indicates that speakers desire for some state of affairs in current.

This even applies to things which happened in the past. This is because the present optative indicates that the wish is still current, not that the desired state of affairs is current. When used in the past, it implies that the desired state of affairs wasn't fulfilled or that the speaker doesn't know if the desired thing did occur.

By contrast, the past optative indicated that the speaker at some point in the past wanted a certain state of affairs. It very often implies that this desire is no longer current. In the first conjugation it is marked with the suffix -la, while in the second conjugation it takes the suffix -lo.

The third person pronoun kobyal is sometimes used as a respectful 1st person. In Ussar society, informality is often considered more appropriate even in formal situations; as the Ussars pride themselves on being egalitarian (which is more notional than real, but whatever). As a result, kobyal is fading out of use, and is mainly used in by commoners to refer to nobility, servants to refer to their masters, and slaves to refer to free people. Some factory owners also require their lowest-level employees to refer to them this way.

ende is the primary 2nd person singular pronoun. It's often replaced with titles when the addressee outranks the speaker, and it's considered good form to call someone by their title if they call you by a title. In writing, it's considered bad style to use anything other than ende to refer to someone though. ende's declension is somewhat irregular:

There's also the 2nd person pronoun, neutral for number isse, which is used by children to parents and by younger siblings to older ones. It's also used by managers to call their employees and nobles to refer to serfs. It's also less commonly used whenever the addressee outranks the speaker but there's also a good bit of intimacy--the use by nobles and managers is seen as lightly self-deprecating. Prescriptivists don't like the latter two uses as they see it as anti-egalitarian, and consequently it's fading out of use anywhere except for the family unit. Isse is irregular too:

Third person pronouns are where it gets real. wek and tiakti are the two most common 3rd person pronouns; they're both singular, animate, and used in more formal or polite contexts. wek is feminine and homophones with wek "woman," whereas tiakti is masculine and clearly related to tiktik "gentleman" [1]. wek is irregular:

Animate referents in less formal contexts and inanimate referents use the pronouns kobyal, kombyal, and sibbyal. kobyal is the proximate 3rd person singular and kombyal is the obviate 3rd person singular. sibbyal is too, but it marks a generic indefinite pronoun like English's use of "one" or "you." All three decline like regular nouns.

The first person plural is encha--yes, it is synonymous with the second singular dual. It's rather irregular:

The third person plurals are clearly derived from the singulars, plus the prefix un-. The forms are unwek, untiakti, ugobyal, ugombyal, unsibbyal, uziwa, and they all decline like their singular forms.

Auxiliary Verb constructions are an important part of the Ussaria verbal system. They consist of two parts: a lexical verb and an auxiliary verb, occurring in that order. As is the norm in most languages, the negative and passive suffixes and the reciprocal prefix are marked on the auxiliary in all cases.

The optative markers are marked on the lexical verb, however. This is because of their origin as auxiliary verbs themselves, who were worn down and normalized in the language's system. (The use of -nun to mark lexical verbs postdates the optatives). As discussed above, they take special forms when followed by an auxiliary. The lexical verb also doesn't take -nun.

I decided to do a little update on the phonology, since I've made a few changes.

Firstly, I've decided to make the retroflex consonants postalveolar. This is partly because of Frislander's point, but also because I realized that I made the consonants retroflex only to be less European. But frankly the phonology is pretty European anyway. And since Ussaria is overall part of an effort I've been making to focus more on Syntax and Morphology, I guess it's ok.

Anyway, so here's the revised phonemic inventory. I copy pasted some stuff that still pertains.

Note that a few of the values of the letters have changed. A few phonemes are also used in loanwords by educated speakers:

/g q ʁ/<g/k kzh xk>

Less educated speakers usually pronounce these as [ŋ kʒ xk].

The syllable structure is a little odd. Basically it's (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C) but there are a few oddities.
-/r l j w/ can all be syllabic consonants, although /j w/ can only be syllabic word initially or word finally.
-/j w/ when they occur word finally surface as palatalization and labialization, respectively, on the last consonant of the word. Thus waky "to put together, to fold" is bisyllabic phonemically but monosyllabic phonetically.
-There's something of a sonority hierarchy. It follows the ordering that the manners of articulation are listed above in, with the additional possibility of combining two in the same class. Thus /pt/, /nm/, and /wj/ are legal. /ŋ/ patterns like a stop sometimes and a nasal other times, a difference which can be seen in some morphophonological alternations. This is because it comes historically from a merger of */ŋ/ and */g/.
-Gemination is allowed.
-Diphthongs aren't. Hiatus is though, and is abundant.

Adjectives (or more accurately attributives, since adverbs are not separated out) are a separate word class from nouns and verbs. Mostly.

There are a few adjective-y things which are used as stative verbs: the color terms and the verb gisr, "to be short, to be small."

Igona gisr.
cricket small
"The cricket is small."

These (and other verbs) can be made in adjectives with the suffix -et.

Adjectives are not allowed without nouns; the dummy noun chap "thing, one" is used instead. The adjective always follows chap.

Che chap gisret ermu weknun.
1p.SG one short INCH marry.a.woman-N
"I married the short one."

Sometimes xue "somebody" is used instead of chap when referring to people.

Adjectives otherwise can occur as predicates or as attributives. Predicate adjectives, as discussed earlier, can take either ko or ini. However, predicate adjectives are dispreferred; attributives+imesi or dummy nouns are much more common. Adjectives can either precede or follow their head noun; the former puts the adjective in focus but the latter is more common. Notably both can be used, where a word like "very" would be used in English.